Syracuse prepared for Connecticut's wildcat offense, but couldn't stop it

East Hartford, Conn. – The Syracuse University defense knew it was coming. It had practiced against it all week. It was confident backup quarterbacks John Kinder and Terrel Hunt ran it better than the team it was about to face and had prepared the Orange to shut it down.

Yet, Syracuse was powerless to stop it, and that is a huge reason it (5-4, 1-3 Big East) is sitting home absorbing the sting of a 28-21 loss to Connecticut (4-5, 2-2) Saturday afternoon at Rentschler Field.

“It” is the Wildcat offense, Husky offensive coordinator George DeLeone’s latest incarnation of option football. The former SU offensive coordinator was on the staff of the Miami Dolphins when that team used it to win the AFC East in 2008 a season after finishing 1-15.

Saturday, he employed it in the second half to help Connecticut pile up 198 yards rushing – the most yielded by SU all season – and overcome deficits of 14-7 and 21-14 to prevail in a game in which UConn had few other statistical advantages.

Redshirt freshman quarterback Scott McCummings (6-foot-2, 218 pounds) directed the scheme, a zone read option in which he handed off to tailback Lyle McCombs (24 carries for 152 yards and one touchdown) or kept the ball himself. McCummings rushed three times for only five yards in the first half but came back after intermission with 10 rushes for 54 yards and fourth-quarter TD runs of 10 and 7 yards.

“When Scott comes in we know we are going to start pushing people around,” senior center Mo Petrus said. “We love to run block. He gives us a different edge."

“It just felt like the right time to do it – just a gut feeling,” UConn coach Paul Pasqualoni said. “We just felt like he (McCummings) was prepared for it, so we put him in the game and went with it.”

The decision surprised the SU brain-trust not one bit, even though the Huskies had gotten away from the package in recent games.

“We thought we worked on it a ton during the week,” SU coach Doug Marrone said. “We expected to see more of it, and at the end of the day obviously they executed better than we did, and we missed tackles.”

“We really believed that is what they would do,” added SU assistant John Anselmo, who helps coach the Orange linebackers in addition to his role as special-teams coordinator. “We prepared for it scheme-wise. We devoted a lot to it in practice. I don’t think that caught us by surprise at all. The think the problem is we just missed tackles in the hole.”

Normally a good-tackling team this season, the Orange defense was in position to make tackles several times and force the Huskies into second- or third-and-long plays. Instead, SU defenders often dropped their heads and dived at the dirt.

“We’ve got to go back to the basic fundamentals of tackling,” linebackers coach Dan Conley said. “As soon as you grab cloth you have to wrap up. If you don’t make plays like that you’ll lose.”

The Orange didn’t make tackles and they did lose despite forcing five first-half turnovers – although the offense unforgivably failed to convert one into points – outgaining the home team 365-311 and doing significantly better on third down (7-for-14 compared to 3-for-8. All are critical factors that usually separate winners from losers, but SU’s failure to stop the Wildcat negated them.

“It was great to be out there,” said McCummings, whose 59-yard rushing performance was a career high. “The blocking was great all day today. I was out there having fun.”

So much fun that the Huskies, despite trailing twice in the second half, threw the ball only three times in rallying with 21 second-half points. Three times this season they had blown leads and lost in the fourth quarter. Saturday, using the Wildcat, they defeating the Orange in the fourth.

“They had over 200 yards rushing (the total slipped to 198 when UConn deliberately took a knee three times to run out the clock).” Marrone said. “A lot if it came out of that formation. A lot of times we had people in the right gaps and missed tackles. That’s something we haven’t done quite a bit of. That’s a concern we need to work on. That will be addressed.”

In the meantime, SU players and coaches will have to live with getting run over in the second half by a package they had prepared all week to defend.

“We schemed all week for it,” junior strong safety Shamarko Thomas said. “It just didn’t come out right, man. Our mindset was try to stop the run and get them to pass. Obviously, we didn’t get that done this week.”